1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image pickup apparatus using a microlens.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various image pickup apparatuses have been proposed and developed. An image pickup apparatus performing predetermined image processing on image pickup data obtained by picking up an image to output the processed image pickup data has been also proposed.
For example, International Patent Publication No. 06/039486 and Ren.Ng, et al. “Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera”, Stanford Tech Report CTSR 2005-02 each propose an image pickup apparatus using a technique called “Light Field Photography”. The image pickup apparatus has a configuration in which a microlens array is arranged on a plane where an image of an object is formed by an image pickup lens, and an image pickup device is arranged on a focal position of the microlens array. Thereby, in the image pickup device, a light ray from the object is obtained as a light ray vector including not only an intensity distribution but also a traveling direction. Therefore, image pickup data obtained from the image pickup device includes information on parallax, and when predetermined image processing is performed on the image pickup data, the image pickup data is applicable to, for example, three-dimensional display or extraction of distance information.